If you have been following my blog since Saturday, you will know that we decided to try wireless broadband to see whether this would provide advantages over our existing DSL connection.
Putting names to the characters in this drama, we receive our DSL from Zen Internet and have been trying out a wireless router supplied by Three.
We have been Zen subscribers for several years and have in general been satisfied with their service. There have been a few upsets such as when we were offline recently for about 36 hours as a result of outages suffered first by BT and then by Zen itself. Precisely, because two parties are involved in supplying our Internet, that doubles the chances of things going wrong.
Why change? Our connection is quite slow (the Which? speed test showed 14.9 Mbps this morning) and we thought we should look at upgrading, perhaps to fibre or to wireless. A secondary consideration is that conventional Internet connections require a phone line, which means a subscription to BT on top of the cost of the Internet connection. Switching to wireless would allow us to dispense with the phone line which we do not use for calls, only for Internet.
As we have our mobile phone service from Three, it made sense to consider using a wireless router supplied by Three. In our area, Three’s 5G is available to mobile phones but not to Internet routers. However, 4G is already pretty fast so it seemed worth trying.
Three’s 5G router
On Saturday, we signed up for a 5G router (which also captures 4G). The contract is for 24 months but, if you are not happy with it, you can return it within the first 30 days.
Setting up the connection is simple: first insert the supplied SIM into the router and plug the power cable into a power socket. You can “join” your various devices by clicking on the router’s name and then inserting the username and password printed in the side of the router. There is also an ethernet socket in case you need to connect a device by wire (the black cable in the photo).
First impressions were highly favourable: the router worked perfectly, our devices connected without any trouble and, despite the connection being only 4G, we were experiencing speeds about 10 times faster than our DSL. By Sunday afternoon, we were feeling fairly confident that we would be adopting the wireless router permanently.
Sunday was a day of rain and thunderstorms, pretty severe thunderstorms, in fact, affecting much of the country. Not that this bothered us particularly, sitting snug and warm at home. But then…
“The connection’s laggy,” said Tigger.
I agreed: websites were slow to load and pictures were taking a long time to appear. I did a speed test and it came out in single figures! The connection had become virtually useless. On top of the router, the symbol for cellular signal strength was red and flashing, indicating a weak signal.
I switched off the wireless router and switched on our Zen router. Would this be affected by whatever problem was slowing the wireless router? No, not in the least: Zen ran happily at its usual slow but steady and reliable pace.
I assume that it was the thunderstorm that brought the wireless router to its knees. Information online suggests that wireless routers are indeed affected by adverse weather conditions. Now, if we lived somewhere where bad weather was rare, we could perhaps live with the occasional outage but, come on, we’re talking about Britain! In this fair land, bad weather comes as standard, not as the exception. We cannot face the prospect of losing the Internet connection every time there is a crackle of thunder or a heavy shower of rain.
In a sense, the thunderstorm did us a favour: had it not occurred, we might have completed the 30-day trial period and adopted the wireless router, only to encounter problems later.
We shall be returning the router and, having recovered our aplomb, looking round to see what other more stable solutions exist for upgrading our Internet connection.
Posts
SilverTiger 